To amuse and enlighten

Note to Pandora: I Don’t Like Radiohead

I set my watch to it. No matter if I’m listening to my Wilco station, my Phish station, my National station, even my Slayer station (I don’t tell people about my Kelly Clarkson station), at some point in the day Pandora is going to serve me up “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead.

I understand that Pandora has classified me, based on my own explicit feedback, as a thirty-something, open-minded musical aficionado with eclectic taste, which apparently screams “Radiohead”. Unfortunately, Radiohead happens to be the most overrated band in the universe.

The problem is compounded by the fact that “Fake Plastic Trees” is one of the few Radiohead songs I actually like, so I can’t give it a thumbs-down just to avoid other whiny ditties from these blokes. I’ll tolerate and appreciate a couple of tracks from Pablo Honey as well, and that’s about it.

What I really detest is Pandora’s categorization of me as a Radiohead fan. Radiohead fans are the most horrifying and confounding species discovered since some unlucky anthropologist first stumbled upon a tiger eating its young. It’s an immutable law of nature: Like monkeys throw crap at each other, Radiohead fans preach the pompous, contrived gospel of Thom Yorke to any unfortunate soul within earshot.

4 thoughts on “Note to Pandora: I Don’t Like Radiohead”

I actually love Radiohead, Smatter. I’m not embarrassed to admit it. But this article is still true (and funny) despite my personal feelings on the matter. Pandora’s personality profiling (particularly because it’s somehow algorithmically based on input that I offered to them) sometimes causes me to scratch my [Radio]head.

Thanks for reading, and for not being offended. I admittedly reacted abruptly with little regard for the feelings of Radiohead fans after hearing “Fake Plastic Trees” for the fiftieth consecutive workday.

Disclosure: a(nother annoying) Radiohead fan here. It is okay for you to dislike RH (and their fans for that matter), but your logic seems somewhat flawed.
I do not understand why you are complaining about Pandora’s choice of songs for you. You say that you do like “Fake Plastic Trees”, so why is that a problem that Pandora keeps on putting on this specific track for you? (you can always press “thumb-down” when a Radiohead song that you hate comes up).

I just googled “why does pandora play Radiohead head so much” and have the exact same feelings. I do like a few of their songs, but they are constantly played until I dislike those as well. Very overrated band!